1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication assistance process and a communication assistance device for a plurality of user terminals connected via a network. In the present invention, e-mail and chat communications include voice data, text data, and image data, and image data includes still images and moving images. In addition, the term “text e-mail” is defined to mean text-based e-mail, and the term “voice e-mail” is defined to mean voice-based e-mail. Likewise, the term “text chat” is defined to mean text-based chat, and the term “voice chat” is defined to mean voice-based chat.
2. Background Information
In a video conference system, a plurality of user terminals such as personal computers, cameras, or the like are connected to a server that integrates these user terminals together. A video conference system employs technology that allows a meeting to be smoothly conducted by reading out stored data associated with a statement made at a meeting from a server and displaying that stored data on the screens of user terminals. For example, data associated with a meeting may be stored on the server in advance, or a statement input from a user terminal may be stored on the server during the course of a meeting. Then, data and/or previously made statements that were stored in advance on the server are read out from the server in response to a statement from one of the user terminals and displayed on the screens of the user terminals. This allows a meeting to be efficiently conducted by selecting and suitably displaying data associated with a topic being discussed during the meeting (see for example Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. H05-347666).
In addition, a video conference system has been disclosed in which identifiers are attached to images and the images are then registered in advance., and when one of these identifiers are input or a statement associated with one of these identifiers is spoken during a meeting, the image associated with the identifier will be displayed (see for example Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. H11-355747).
Furthermore, a chat system sometimes provides supplementary services such as an auto-response service which automatically responds with text chat. Here, the chat system is composed of a chat server connected via a network to a plurality of chat clients. In this chat system, a virtual conversation space established on a network, commonly referred to as a channel, is shared by a plurality of chat clients, and messages can be sent and received therein in real time. In addition, a text chat auto-response service is one in which a device that provides the auto-response service participates with the chat client in a chat room. When a keyword is transmitted from a user terminal to the chat room, the device will conduct a search based upon that keyword and transmit the search results to the chat room. Examples of this type of auto-response service include a stock price service that provides the stock price of a company specified in a chat by displaying the stock price on the screens of the user terminals, a service that informs users of the train schedules for a particular train station, a service that transmits specified keywords to a WWW (World Wide Web) search page and informs users of the URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) associated with the keywords, and the like. This type of auto-response service will allow users to carry out an uninterrupted conversation in a chat room.
However, one problem with the technology and the auto-response service disclosed in the prior art noted above is that when the data provided in response to a statement made during a meeting is in the form of voice data, voice communications between the user terminals will be interrupted when the voice data is provided to the user terminals. For example, the user terminals in a video conference system normally include a function which receives voice data from a plurality of user terminals. Because of that, when data associated with a topic in a video conference is provided to the user terminals in the form of voice data, there will be occasions in which voice communications between the user terminals will overlap with the voice data. Thus, it will be difficult to hear voice communications between the user terminals, and the meeting will not proceed smoothly.
Network speeds have increased in recent years, and thus it is assumed that communications between user terminals will not only be in the form of text data and/or image data, but that the use of video conference systems using voice data will accelerate. For example, voice services such as ticket reservations for airlines and the line, train transfer information, lodging information, medical care information, horoscopes, weather forecasts, and the like continue to be developed, and it is thought that these services will be used on video conference systems. Furthermore, services that use shared XML data which employ Voice XML (Voice extensible Markup Language) to provide WWW search services continue to be developed. Thus, in the future, there will be increased demand for technology that not only allows voice communications to be smoothly carried out between user terminals, but also allows voice communications between a service provider and user terminals to be smoothly carried out.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide technology in a communication system that allows communications to proceed smoothly.